Tag Archives: Finnish sports

Many people have written in this blog about us Finns being reserved, quiet and not so easy to approach. We don’t care much for small talk and blabbering, and we tend to be honest and straightforward. The image of Finns living in a cottage in the middle of a forest, fishing and enjoying the silence of nature is still living strong in people’s minds.

I would like to point out that this is not the only truth about us Finns. Thoug we from time to time need our own space, Finland is also the land of peculiar, extraordinary and unique events and gatherings.

First comes the sport. We are quite competitive in Finland, and we can make a sports competition of about anything. One of my favorites is the swamp soccer championships, that take place every summer. Basically this is about playing soccer in the swamp, there are over two thousand players and two hundred teams involved. At the same time is also held the swamp rock festival, and the spirit of the event is unbelievable.

And have you ever heard about the wife carrying championships? It’s a race where the male competitors carry the female competitors on their shoulder trough a track filled with obstacles. It has it’s roots in the 1800’s when it was apparently common practice to steal women from the neighbouring willages. There are over 80 teams attending this event, many of these foreign also.

Last but not least is of course the beer floating! It is an event where thousands of people float down the Vantaa river in all kinds of self-built or bought rafts and enjoy a beer or two. This event is the perfect example of the crazy and spontanious side of Finns. You come up with an idea, gather some friends and make it happen – in a few years it might have become a tradition for hundreds or even thousands of people!

When you first start to think Finnishness a lot comes to mind like Finnish forests, lakes, sommercottages, four seasons especially winter, wintersports, means to us etc. I could go on and on about those, but here are already great posts about those subjects.

So I decided to write about some crazy sports we have in Finland

Eukonkanto (wife carrying)

Eukonkanto is a sport, where man needs to race through obstacles while carrying his partner upside down. The winner wins his partner weight in beer. For this entertaining sport worldchampionship contest is held every year in Sonkajärvi since 1992. There the track includes one meter deep water jump and two fences you need to climb.

(Note: There is no rule that man needs to carry, it can go eitherway. But the one onboard needs to weight over 49kg.)Source: https://finnicalmatters.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/wife-carrying-championships-eukonkanto/

Suopotkupallo(playing football in a swamp)

Some say the idea came from Finnish skiers strength training did on a swam for this sport. But no matter where it came from Finns has had their own championship contest since 1998. Since that the contest has grown into the world championship, which is held in Hyrynsalmi.

The rules have a big resemblence to football, but there are quite a few differences. The playing fiel is only 60 meters long and 35 meters wide, so it only makes sense that a goal is also smaller being only 2 meters deep and 5 meters wide. The game includes two rounds each lasts ten minutes. Each team has max. five + one player on the field same time.
Photographer: Pekka Honkakoski (http://ukkohalla.fi/suopotkupallo/)

Welcome!

This blog is your window to Finnishness. Here you will find blog posts written by students of Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) describing their personal experiences and notions of being a Finn or living in Finland. This blog is part of the course "Intercultural Experiences and Competences" and was started in spring 2016.

You can use the tag cloud to find posts with specific contents, and to find posts from a specific month, use the navigation at the bottom of the page titled “Blog Post Archive”. Feel free to leave comments as well! Enjoy!